Taking You

by Jessie Evans

  Taking You

  A Summerville Novella

  (Always a Bridesmaid #5)

  By Jessie Evans

  Weddings, engagements, and babies, oh my...

  It's the eve of Lark and Mason's wedding, and Lark has a secret she's been hiding from everyone, even her husband-to-be. Melody and Nick make a choice that will change their lives, and Aria and Nash learn that sometimes love doesn't go according to plan.

  Join all your favorite characters, as well as a new, surprise couple, in the heart-warming conclusion to the "Always a Bridesmaid" series.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  Copyright © 2013 Jessie D. Evans

  This book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the author. This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously. Cover image by Maglara for Shutterstock. Cover design by Bootstrap Cover Designs. Editing by Edited Ever After Editorial.

  Other Novels by Jessie Evans

  Betting on You

  Keeping You

  Wild For You

  Catching You

  Dedicated to M. Thanks for the happy ever after.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter One

  Gretchen “Nana” March

  Monkeyshine. Gretchen Maryanne March didn’t tolerate it. Never had, never would.

  She liked fun as much as the next person—she jitterbugged every Friday at the senior center, spent hours during the summer nursing her watermelons to prize-winning size, and was not averse to a little whiskey in her cider on a cold winter’s night—but there was a way things ought to be done. Tradition was a gift from the family that came before, a time-honored way of doing things meant to keep old folks on the straight and narrow and young folks out of trouble. Tradition was the opposite of monkeyshine.

  But unfortunately, her favorite granddaughter’s wedding rehearsal was shaping up to be anything but traditional.

  Narrowing her eyes, Gretchen swept her cool gaze over the assembled company.

  Her granddaughters, Aria, Lark, and Melody, were at the front of the church, fussing over what time to bring in the flowers the next morning, even though Gretchen had told them, repeatedly, to hire some of those Mexican boys from the hardware store to put up the flowers instead of trying to do everything themselves. Thrift was well and good, but Lark’s soon-to-be-husband was a doctor. Certainly, he could afford a few Mexicans.

  She’d said as much to Lark.

  Judging by the face Lark had made, you would have thought Gretchen had suggested the bridesmaids carry stinkweed bouquets down the aisle.

  Then Aria had started in on one of her lectures about how people are people and have names and identities and dignity and yap yap yap, as if Gretchen wasn’t a lifelong registered Democrat in spite of her late husband’s and son’s Republican leanings. She had been a firm believer in equal rights since the sixties.

  But she had seen that look in the girls’ eyes, that “Oh no, Nana’s gone and shown her slip again,” look, and so she’d removed herself to the back of the church without another word, leaving them to work out the flower business on their own.

  From the way the three of them were still squawking, it wasn’t going so well, and Aria was so wrapped up in their conversation she hadn’t noticed that Gretchen’s great-granddaughter was toddling all over the church. Allowing a teething toddler to run loose in a house of worship was disrespectful. Felicity was going to end up gumming on all the hymnals, and Pastor Daniels would know exactly who was to blame for the damage.

  Gretchen’s mouth pruned as she watched Felicity’s red head disappear into another row of pews.

  She turned to look for the baby’s step-daddy—to see if at least he might be paying attention—but the three men her granddaughters had hitched themselves to were all at the back of the church with the rest of the groomsmen, laughing too loud and passing around a flask the youngest one had brought.

  Liquor in church. Gretchen’s mouth pruned tighter.

  That flask alone would have been enough to make her disapprove of that Nick character, even if she hadn’t seen all the tattoos he thought he was hiding under those long-sleeved shirts he put on for family gatherings.

  But she’d seen Nick Geary downtown last week and gotten a good long look at the nonsense scribbled all over his arms. He looked like a felon—a handsome felon who bore a striking resemblance to a darker-haired James Dean, but a felon nevertheless.

  Melody could do much better. Gretchen intended to tell her so the next time Melody came over to help her thread her sewing machine.

  There were so many nice, single boys Melody’s age in the church right now, and Gretchen knew all of their grandmothers. There was no reason for Melody to settle for a flask-toting troublemaker when she could settle down with a nice boy. And she needed to settle down soon, so she could start making babies at a reasonable age, instead of waiting until the change of life was practically on her the way these other girls seemed to be doing.

  It was better to get babies out of the way when you were young, before you had too much time to get used to being single and childless. Idle hands are the devil’s playthings, after all, and nothing keeps a woman’s hands busier than a child.

  As if summoned by her thoughts, there was a loud thud followed by a piercing shriek as the baby began to cry.

  Aria jumped and turned to search for her daughter, only to end up crawling down the row of pews in her red dress, probably flashing her underwear to half the church, before she spotted the toddler and gathered Felicity into her arms.

  “Is she okay?” Nash asked, hurrying down the aisle.

  “She’s fine,” Aria said, rocking the baby as she rubbed Felicity’s back in soothing circles. “Just dropped a hymnal on her toe, I think.”

  A hymnal on her toe.

  Could have been much worse, Gretchen thought to herself.

  And it was probably going to get worse. Her granddaughters were as bad as that baby, running around completely unsupervised, slapping together a wedding all willy-nilly, like it was some Saturday night BBQ. Gretchen had no idea what her daughter-in-law was thinking, letting the girls take charge like this, but then Sue had always been inclined to let her daughters get away with murder.

  First, she let Aria fly off to Europe to live with hippies and perverts when she was practically still a child, then Lark dropped out of college, and then Melody skipped college completely, giving up a full scholarship to go to cooking school, which she wouldn’t have needed if Sue had taught her girls how to cook the way a Southern woman should. Now, Aria was a remarried divorcee, Lark was living with her fiancé before they were married, and Melody spent far too much time over at her felon boyfriend’s apartment, unchaperoned.

  If she didn’t know better, Gretchen would have thought her youngest granddaughter was living with the boy, but not even Sue would tolerate that kind of behavior. Melody and Nick weren’t even engaged. It would be a scandal worse than the time Bob went streaking down Main Street. The family would never live it down.

  If Stephen were still alive, he would have whipped the entire lot of them into shape, but her husband of fifty-four years had been dead for almost a year. Now it was up to Gretchen to keep this family on the straight and narrow.

  “I don’t know!” Lark suddenly shouted at Melody, drawing all eyes to the front of the church. “I can’t decide and I’m so tired and puffy and my dress i
s never going to fit and everything is ruined!”

  She burst into tears louder than Felicity’s and ran from the room, disappearing through the door leading to the choir loft.

  “Monkeyshine,” Gretchen mumbled beneath her breath, rising to go after her granddaughter.

  But before she could make her way out of her pew, Mason came sprinting down the aisle like they were on a football field instead of inside a church, and raced after his fiancée. If Gretchen had reached the end of the pew a little faster, she had no doubt she would have been run over.

  “This is a church, not a track meet!” she called after Mason, not surprised when her future grandson-in-law ignored her completely.

  “These kids,” came a deep voice from the pew behind her.

  Gretchen turned to see Harris Nelson, one of the church deacons, standing with his arms crossed at his chest, a teasing twinkle in his blue eyes.

  “What are you doing here, Harris Nelson? Did they cancel Bingo at the Elk’s lodge?” Gretchen asked, lifting her chin and patting her fiercely hair-sprayed white curls.

  “I’m helping Pastor Daniels at the wedding tomorrow,” Harris said. “I told him I’d lock up after y’all are through. He had some shut-ins to check on this afternoon.”

  “That’s Christian of you,” Gretchen said. “But does Pastor Daniels know he’s working with a deacon who’s got a gambling problem?”

  “Is it gambling if you always win?” Harris winked as he propped his hands on the back of her pew, leaning closer.

  Gretchen couldn’t help but notice what nice hands he had, big and tan and strong-looking despite his thinning skin.

  She lifted her eyes to his, refusing to be flustered by a man almost young enough to be her son. Harris was ten years younger—sixty-eight to her seventy-eight—and had always been trouble, even back when his wife was still alive.

  Since Regina had passed three years ago, the man spent more time at the Elk’s lodge than any church deacon should. He clearly needed a woman to take him in hand. Gretchen made a mental note to send one of her younger girlfriends in his direction. Maybe Shirley. She wouldn’t be seventy until next summer and was almost fully recovered from her hip replacement.

  “You’re a mess, Harris Nelson,” Gretchen said, clucking her tongue. “And that’s the truth.”

  “I like how you always say my full name,” he said, chuckling. “Makes me feel like I’m back in elementary school, getting in trouble with the teacher. Remember the old school, back when all the grades were together?”

  Gretchen huffed. “Of course I do, I’m not senile.”

  “I remember the first time I saw you,” Harris said, with a grin. “You’d walk past the playground before school with your friends, that blond ponytail bobbing. I swear I thought you looked like a movie star.”

  “This isn’t the place to swear anything.” Gretchen fought a smile, not wanting to let the compliment please her for some reason. “And besides, you were just a baby back then. What were you, five years old?”

  “Eight,” he said. “Plenty old enough to know a beautiful girl when I see one.”

  “Saw one,” Gretchen corrected automatically, the former English teacher in her unable to resist.

  “Nope. See one. Present tense,” Harris said, winking again.

  Gretchen blinked in confusion for a moment before his meaning hit and a giggle bubbled out of her without her conscious permission.

  “Harris Nelson,” she said after a moment, shaking her head. “Are you flirting with me?”

  “I guess I’m not doing a very good job if you have to ask,” he said, with a rather adorably shy grin. “So…what are you doing after the rehearsal? Want to go have a decaf coffee and talk old times? My treat?”

  Gretchen looked into his kind blue eyes—still as clever and full of mischief as they’d been when he was a little boy—and for the first time since Stephen had died, she began to think about new beginnings.

  Chapter Two

  Lark and Mason

  “Lark?“ Mason burst through the heavy wooden door leading back to the choir loft, but there was no sign of Lark on the benches or the raised platform at the back of the space.

  “Baby, where are you?” Mason spun in a circle, looking for where she might have gone, concern making his heart beat faster.

  Lark had seemed fine earlier when they both arrived at the church after work, but he knew she’d been feeling the stress of the impending wedding. He’d also had to miss her first ultrasound today to do rounds at the hospital, and that certainly hadn’t helped ease her stress-levels. He’d promised he’d be at the next ultrasound, come hell or high water, but he knew it didn’t make up for missing the first one.

  This was their first baby, and she wanted everything to be perfect, especially since their child had been conceived before they were officially married. Mason couldn’t care less about that little detail—he was starting a family with the woman he loved, that was all he cared about—but Lark’s Mom and Dad cared very, very much. He suspected Lark’s determination to make this wedding perfect was her way of compensating for disappointing her parents.

  Mason appreciated Lark’s good heart and was looking forward to tomorrow, but a part of him couldn’t wait for the wedding to be over, so life could return to normal and Lark could get some much-needed rest.

  After one last scan of the empty space, he headed toward another door on the opposite side of the room. It led to the back stairs and the fellowship hall beneath the sanctuary. It was the only place Lark could have gone from this point.

  He was almost to the door when he heard the muffled sobs.

  He paused, ears straining. It was definitely Lark, and it sounded like she was somewhere…above him.

  Mason backtracked into the room, heading for two doors he’d assumed led to supply closets. The first one proved him right—it was full of choir hymnals and robes and piles and piles of sheet music—but the second door opened onto a narrow, circular staircase.

  It was the staircase to the baptismal suite above the organ. He remembered it now. He’d been seventeen the last time he’d walked up these stairs, on his way to get baptized years later than any of his friends.

  But then he had never set foot in a church until his mom left town when he was sixteen. At first, it was just another excuse to get away from his uncle’s house, but soon church services became a comfort. He had special memories of the baptismal suite, in particular. It was the place where he had first felt like he belonged to something bigger than himself.

  Maybe that’s why Lark had chosen to seek refuge here. Maybe it gave her comfort, too.

  “Baby?” he asked, easing into the small room with the raised pool in the middle. Lark was sitting on the bench along the wall, her feet pulled up and her black-and-white flowered dress tucked over her knees.

  “What’s wrong?” Mason asked softly. “Tell me, and I’ll go fix it.”

  Lark sniffed and lifted liquid brown eyes to his. “I can’t do this.”

  “Can’t do what?” he asked, stomach tightening. His logical mind knew that Lark wasn’t talking about their relationship—their love was as rock-solid as anything he’d known—but the small part of him that still worried he didn’t deserve a second chance with Lark wasn’t one hundred percent sure.

  “It’s just too much,” she said, tears slipping down her cheeks. “And I’m so tired, and I’m never going to fit in my dress.”

  “Yes, you will.” Mason went to her, sitting close and putting one arm around her shoulder.

  She leaned into him with a shuddery breath.

  “You tried it on yesterday, right? And you said it fit fine. Everything’s going to fine,” he said, running his fingers lightly up and down the bare skin on her arm.

  It was late October and chilly out, but Lark had been feeling hot all the time lately—hot and tired and puffy and prone to crying for any reason and no reason. Though he knew she was overjoyed to be having their baby, the actual being-a-pregnant-w
oman part of the situation wasn’t agreeing with her.

  “No, it’s not,” she said with a dramatic sniff. “Melody and Aria say the flower arrangements for the ends of the pews are too big. No one’s going to be able to get in and out without knocking all the flowers off.”

  “Then we’ll ask the guests to go into the pews on the other side,” Mason said.

  “We can’t do that! It would be so inconvenient.”

  “So what?” he asked. “They’re our family and friends. They shouldn’t mind a little inconvenience in the name of making the church look pretty when the bride walks down the aisle.”

  “And Melody thinks we need to be here by seven a.m. to get all the flowers up and make it to our hair appointments on time,” Lark said, still sounding anxious. “But I’m so exhausted! If I don’t sleep in, I’ll never make it through the whole day without a nap. But I can’t ask them to do the flowers by themselves because it’s my wedding, and I’m the one who wanted to do the flowers instead of hiring a florist, and Melody is already covering for me at work next week so we can go on our honeymoon, and Aria spent her only day off this week making our cake, and I just feel like everything is going to fall apart and they will hate me forever for being such a cheapskate!”

  Mason fought the urge to smile. He knew Lark was really upset, but she was pretty cute when she was in the middle of a stress ramble.

  “They know we’re saving money for the baby,” he said. “Your sisters understand. They love you, and they don’t think you’re being cheap.”

  “Nana thinks I am,” Lark said, finally beginning to relax beneath his touch.

  “Nana is a cranky old goat.”

  Lark snorted and punched him lightly in the stomach. “Don’t talk about my Nana like that. Only blood relatives are allowed to call her names, and only when she’s too far away to hear because we’re all terrified of her.”

  “She has been up in everyone’s business more than usual lately, hasn’t she?”